Araucaria mirabilis
species of plant (fossil)
Araucaria mirabilis is an extinct species of coniferous tree from Patagonia, Argentina. It belongs to the genus Araucaria.
A. mirabilis are known from large amounts of very well preserved silicified wood and cones from the Cerro Cuadrado Petrified Forest, including tree trunks that reached 100 m (330 ft) in height in life. The site was buried by a volcanic eruption during the Middle Jurassic, approximately 160 million years ago.
Discovery
Fossils of Araucaria mirabilis are found in great abundance in the Cerro Cuadrado Petrified Forest of Patagonia, Argentina. They were the dominant species of a forest buried by a volcanic eruption about 160 million years ago.
The petrified forests of A. mirabilis were first discovered in 1919 by the German-Argentinean botanist Anselmo Windhausen. Noting that petrified cones were being kept as souvenirs by local farmers in the area, he explored the region and discovered the site of the petrified forests in 1923. He sent the specimens he collected to the German botanist Walther Gothan in Berlin in 1924. Gothan named them Araucaria windhauseni in honor of Windhausen in 1925.
The public source identifies “Araucaria mirabilis” as species of plant (fossil). This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Araucaria, mirabilis and species.
Why this record matters
A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Araucaria mirabilis”, the useful work is to connect “species of plant (fossil)” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.
Stable identifiers, scientific names and standards terminology offer the best bridge between this overview and specialist evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 29, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4784457. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1919, 1923, 1924 and 1925.
A general summary may omit uncertainty, sample limits or methodological disagreement that is explicit in the technical record. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Araucaria mirabilis” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.